Homeland Security subcommittee hears testimony alleging China-linked illegal marijuana networks across U.S.

At a hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security’s Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations and Accountability, federal, state and private witnesses described what they called an extensive network of illegal marijuana cultivation run by transnational criminal organizations with links to Chinese nationals and Chinese money-laundering networks.

Donnie Anderson, director of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics, told the subcommittee the issue was “not only a public safety interest, but also the interest of America's national security.” Anderson said Oklahoma’s liberal medical-marijuana framework and inexpensive farmland attracted large-scale illegal grows and that state records show a stark mismatch between licenced production and reported retail sales. Anderson cited a figure of 87,210,960 registered plants and said about 85,000,000 plants are “unaccounted for,” which he and others at the hearing described as evidence of diversion to a black market worth an estimated $153,000,000,000 in missing product and proceeds.

Paul Larkin, senior legal research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the panel that legalization in many states had not eliminated the black market. “The black market has not disappeared even though a majority of states in the United States now have approved either medical or…